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Show 12 PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT WYOMING. truth remained for years. Later on a modern derrick was put up by the heirs of Judge Carter, soon after his demise, and they sank a shaft 100 feet, from which they obtained a con- IN operators (By Edward Shattuck Eastman.) As the Uinta oil fields are coming siderable amount of oil, which was also Pacific Railway into prominence it may be of some in. sold to the Union was in operation well This terest to those not already conversant company. was several years, but finally abanwith their history to know something doned on account of the railway comof their discovery and subsequent de- pany purchasing a refined lubricant, the product of a coarser grade of pevelopment. troleum at a lower price, from an eastIt is claimed the first trace of oil ern concern. The Carter company, not is near was what found in Wyoming knowing the real value of their now the central part of the state, in product, made no further attempt to was rethe year 1832, by Captain Bonneville, dispose of it. The derrick moved and the buildings were finally and was described by him and in the destroyed by fire and the works of early writers as "tar springs, uncased, caved in, and today there is it not being known at uat time just nothing to mark the spot but a steady what it was. In the year 1863 oil was oozing of oil from a slight depression in the ground. collected from a spring near the PoiProm this time on there is nothing son Spider creek and was sold along the Mormon trail as axle grease, also of interest to record in the Wyoming to the Uinta county coal mines, oil industry until about two years ago it being used as a lubricant, but being the Union Pacific Railway company tsAcen from near the. surface, was employed a Mr. L. E. Nebergall of found to contain more or less grit, and Omaha to sink an artesian well to pro well,-bein- -- dispute is located, are designated as grazing and agricultural lands. When the Union Pacific officials learned that petroleum had been found near Spring valley they knew that they had lots of trouble and litigation before them unless the news could be suppressed. So when Mr. Nebergall made his rekeep quiet, port they cautioned him toonce to supand steps were taken at was well The facts. the all press was word and abandoned and capped In hole. a was out it that dry given news the of manner some .however, discovery got out, and the well was visited in a surreptitious way by the agents of capitalists who were interested In getting at the facts and despite the plugging and other precautions taken by the Union Pacific to keep the oil down, a lot or it seeped to the top of the hole, and samples were obtained by those who wanted to convince themselves that it was really petroleum. With this evidence, and taking advantage of uie fact that the well had been abandoned, the American Consolidated Oil company, a California concern, filed an entry under tltles and that it was not, therefore tte 'lalm und tie ,open laws. The oil company on themineral hand, insisted that it had troleum, that the land was not patent title was stiu "ith the United States government and that the discoverers of the mineral denoRit. were, therefore, entitled to file upon it Under advice of its attorneys the oli company secured a drilling outfit and began preparations to sink another well on the section close to that nut down by the Union Pacific. Workmen employed by the railway quietly due three pits, in each of which they placed six d charges of dy and the whole connected with namite, an electric battery. Without telline how it was to be done, word was to the oil company that any effortsent to move in on the land would result In the entire outfit being blown up and the project of sinking a new well was abandoned, there being but one road by which they could reacu this land from Spring Valley. Shortly aferwards one of the workmen who had buried the dynamite incautiously told about it and Frank James, sheriff of Uinta county, on a plea that it was a menace to human life and property, was induced to get rid of it by touching off the three charges. The report of the explosion could oe heard for miles, and it tore a hole in the ground hundreds of feet in circumference and over, thirty feet deep. While this kind of warfare was going on at the well, high priced lawyers were fighting for both sides in the courts and before the interior department. Finally the litigation reached such a stage that one of the judges suggested that the dispute might easily be settled by determining whether the well contained petroleum and whether it was in paying quantities. Under this quasi compromise Special Agent J. W. Zevely of the interior department was assigned to make the test and submit an official repor of its findings. Mr. Zevely arrived in Evanston June 25, 1902, and left next day for Spring Valley, accompanied by a large party of Interested people, including attorneys for both of the litigants, court officials and several oil experts from the Pennsylvania,' Texas and California fields. The first work of Mr. Zevely on arriving at the well was to remove the shanty over the well in which the armed guards had been housed. It was then found that the bore had been effectually sealed by tne Insertion of wooden plug on top of which a h was about three eet of loose rock and earth, the whole being topped off wltu a foot of solid cement. It took a lot of hard work to get rid of this obstruction, but when it was removed there was no doubt as to the character of the well or the fact that Wyoming was hereafter to have official recognition as a great oil producing state. As the woden plug was pulled out the force of the gas drove the petroleum to the top of the well, and balling operations were ai once commenced. There was no dispute as to the of the oiL The experts agreed that was petroleum of unusual grade, and at it was worth fully $8 a barrel as came trom the well. This important to lint settled, the next thing was scide upon the quantity that could d Even with the fact j obtained. might Pacific there the Union ill have a chance of defeating the that aimants if it couni be shown . quanu-escould not be had m paying The test of the quantity taken ww, om the hole in a given time nun-eA erefore, of supreme interest. barrel tank car had been pln fro i the track a short distance by PIP it with elL and connected a ne. The oil was hauled up in run illon bailer and allowed to tanx. . the to ie piping and thence le first five hours forty barro8 inked, and by 7 oclock thatJJg ie tank was filed to its qusn (ira hundred barrels. This twenty-flve-poun- ten-inc- its use was soon discontinued. Few persons have any idea of the large number of oil springs in Wyoming or the vast area in which they occur; there are hundreds of them scatered over the state, being most common in Uinta county, the most notate of these being the Carter oil spring, located about ten miles east of Evans- ton. This spring was discovered in tne year 1866 by Judge Carter, then a post trader at old Fort Bridger, from whim it derives its name. Upon making the discovery he reported to General Connor, commander o.. the federal garrison at Fort Bridger, who sent John Fiero, an experienced well digger, who, together with his associates, well ,from which they dug a fifty-foin the neighborhood of 150 obtained of barrels oil, which was sold to the Union Pacific railway and the Black Buttes Coal company, receiving $25 per barrel for it in the crude state, just as it came from the well, and is alleged to have contained no grit, as did that taken from the Poison Spider creek. However, it had to be transported some distance by team. The enterprise was not found to be a fraying one, and was abandoned on account of insufficient capital to operate it on a paying scale. The old pole derrick and log house used by the ot vide a water supply for railroad purposes near Spring Valley, near the east end of Aspen tunnel; Mr. Nebergall went down 1,200 feet without striking a vein of water, but at that point his drill tapped a copious flow of petroleum. Now the Union Pacific was not looking for oil, and they didnt want to find oil, especially on such of its land as had not been patented. The reason is simple enough; if the discovery became known there would be a mad rush of prospectors and adventurers, and wherever oil was found there would be a mineral claim filed and the discoverer would make application for a patent, and the railway would be in a fair way of losing title to an immense area of valuable property. This is made possible by two clauses in the federal land Taws; one of them designates oil as a mineral and it has been sustained by numerous rulings of the interior department. The other exempts mineral rights from the ownership of lands held for grazing and agricultural purposes unless they are fully patented and allows anyone who discovers minerals of any kind on such land to file an entry and obtain title. Now the unpatented lands held by the Union Pacific in this pfrs0LWyomIng including the section at Spring valley, where the well in the mineral clause of land laws and claimed a title as discoverers. Then the fight began that has waged for a year and a half. The oil company tried to take possession of the property, but was driven off, and the Union Pacific put armed guards at the well, with instruction to shoot anyone who attempted to meddle with it. As a further precaution the hole was sealed with cement and a shanty erected over it, in which the guards were housed. About this time the Union Pacific Railway company, while engaged in constructing the Aspen tunnel, struck oil sand in two places in such quantities as to require them to lay a copping of rock and cement fifteen feet thick to withstand the pressure. In one case, when the sand was encountered. the gas became ignited and a terrific explosion occurred, whicn caused the death of a large number of men and great difficulty was experienced in checking the flow, which, from reliaole parties, is claimed to approximate 200 barrels a day. Eyery effort was made by the Union Pacific company to keep these discoveries a secret, but every one knows that an oil strike is too big an affair to suppress. The contention of the Upion Pacific was that there was no oil on the land, atl least not In paying qusn- - na-r- e con-ide- d m |